


Hiding and Revealing

by M0use



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Angst and Porn, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Inspired by Music, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 23:33:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10627494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M0use/pseuds/M0use
Summary: It's not that Mikey minds Gerard and his newfound, beautiful wife coming to stay with Mikey in their--his and Gerard's--childhood home. It's his own fault that he's used it as a depression cave to retreat in since leaving tour, and that he's not used to people anymore.He wishes they weren't so obvious though.





	

**Author's Note:**

> what's up new jersey! haven't been here in a while.  
> this fic is the first in a p. domestic series i've been working on for a bit wherein consensual, loving lindsey/gerard/mikey happens. just had to throw in some angst first. you know how it is. the series is based on a prompt list and is going to be a bunch of very short one-shots, most of which will probably just be chapters in a single fic.  
> this, meanwhile, is an actual one-shot. title and inspiration from [Satellite Mind](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZbdZVMLnQ4) by Metric.  
> hope you enjoy, and thank you.
> 
> ==

Mikey doesn’t actually share telepathic abilities with his brother. A lot of people tease them about it—or they had, before—but it’s not a real thing. They can “talk” without talking by reading each other’s expressions. When you know someone long enough you naturally start to tune yourself to their rhythms. Mikey had been around Gerard for, literally, all his life. It’s not a surprise they can communicate well.  
   
If he actually had telepathic powers he would’ve known to expect it when his brother called him at one in the morning to exclaim, loudly, how he’d gotten married. He had a wife. He’d forgotten about the time difference, which he apologized for after Mikey had spent a few seconds speechless, blinking and stunned in the dark of his bedroom.  “You’ll love her, Mikey,” Gerard promised, his heart so full that he couldn’t see how anyone else’s would react differently.  
Not being able to read Mikey’s thoughts, he inferred what he wanted from Mikey’s silence. “I know it’s sudden but I couldn’t wait anymore, you know? We—we’re gonna come home together. For our honeymoon. You’ll just love her.”

 

What could Mikey say to that?

 

  
The pair of newlyweds did come home, to the three-floored house in Jersey with its parlour full of creepy clown dolls and wedges in the kitchen counter where grade-school impersonations of the Ninja Turtles had taken their toll. When they got in and had put their bags down, Gerard ran his fingers over the scars in the old linoleum and told Lindsey about it, waving his hands animatedly. He was taking her on a home tour and no detail was small enough to leave out.  
  
Lindsey is beautiful. Mikey had indeed met her before, like Gerard had said over the phone when calling to announce their marriage—“MSI, you know?” He’s met her but doesn’t really know much about her, other than that she’s a fellow bassist. Even from a distance it's easy to tell a few things about her: obvious example the first, that she was beautiful. She has a good stage presence, unlike himself. Her hair is a wave that’s constantly trying to escape. She holds it back with a couple of purple elastics. Her eyeliner and bright lipstick make her look like a movie starlet in the stagelights, if movie starlets were usually punk rock.  
Up close she’s sharp-eyed and –witted. She’s delighted, laughing all the time but not so much so that it’s fake.

It’s different seeing her here, for Mikey. Difficult. Here as in with Gerard, and also here as in inside this house surrounded by things that Mikey has known all his life. Her and Gerard fill up the space so brightly, and it’s not their fault, they don’t even know they're doing anything, they’re happy and he should be happy for them.

 

Mikey still can’t look at them for very long. He misses Alicia.

 

He’d left the tour because he’d been drinking again, not heavily by his standards but with the meds he’d been on any drinking at all was too much, and his band had caught him at it. (Mikey tried to not be bitter over how they’d noticed so quickly the _second_ time. It half-worked.) 

That isn't even true. His new doctors are big on honesty, so: he’d left the tour because he’d been drinking because he’d been unstable, again. And still now.  
He’d been depressed, so he’d drank and got caught. So he’d fled back to Jersey, and his relationship with Alicia had fractured en-route. They’d been strained even when she’d been on the first leg of the Black Parade tour with him and the band. His relapse had been the metaphorical straw on the camels’ back. Thinking about it ached.  
  
Being in Jersey didn’t make the bipolar go away but it made the treatment of it easier. He was seeing less doctors than he had been back when he’d first escaped the Paramour, thank God, but therapy twice a week still sucked. It was hard explaining himself to someone. Especially when he kept fucking up so much.   
A month into his "sabbatical", he’d had to confess to his therapist that he’d been purposefully letting a moderate side-effect of his medications, drowsiness and cognitive fatigue, continue for two weeks without mentioning, because it was easier to sleep than to try and untangle the mess of tangled wires that conversations with his family had become. That’d got those particular dosages removed from his regimen, obviously. He’d been bitter about that for an additional month.   
It was all so much easier when he didn’t have to think. He could just let the deep fog take him.  He didn’t spend consistent weeks wanting to kill himself anymore, wasn’t that enough?

  
If Gerard could read Mikey’s mind, he’d know how much Mikey can’t actually stand company right now. He'd know how much Mikey wished that Gerard could take his beautiful wife and bright laughter _somewhere else._

Instead, Gerard brings Lindsey and all their luggage upstairs to the room that had previously been the guest bedroom but was now, basically, their marriage bed. The one that was five diagonal steps away from where Mikey was sleeping.

 

Over the month that they stay in the house, it's more days than not that Mikey can hear them fucking through two closed doors. They’re a harmony, one side of it a refrain Mikey knows. Gerard’s masturbation sounds have been a relatively normal part of Mikey’s night world since they were both in their early teens, and it’s not like he hid his sex-having when he’d come home from university with some “friend”, either. His brother always sounds a little different when he’s with a partner.   
Lindsey's noises are new to Mikey entirely, although female (for lack of a less-creepy way to think about them) in a way that is intimately familiar. Like sweat always smells like sweat even from different people or a cheering, moshing crowd.  
  
Lindsey and Gerard take early nights. Sometimes when Mikey is trudging up the stairs and along the hallway he sees that their door’s been left open a crack; the happy couple probably forgetting to close it in a rush of post-marriage hormones. Mikey pauses in the hallway before he can think about it, his throat pulsing as he holds his breath, his fingertips buzzing. Eventually he rushes forwards to his own bed, but not always soon enough.  
  
Even in his own bed it’s barely better. He can still hear the creak of their box mattress, the headboard’s steady squeak against the wall.

Mikey thanks God that he isn’t telepathic with his brother because he pictures the both of them, Lindsey and Gerard; he can’t not. He wonders what position they’ve taken. Maybe missionary. Maybe Gerard’s knee is still giving him pain from the disastrous Famous Last Words shoot, so Lindsey is on top, her powerful thighs spread on either side of his brother’s hips as she lifts herself up and down on his cock; Gerard thrusting up to meet her, giving that goddamn dazzling grin from flat on the bed, all flushed with his hair damp and in his eyes, which would be sparkling, because of fucking course they’d be sparkling.  
Maybe they’ve bought a playful strap-on and Lindsey’s on top in a different way.  
  
Mikey wonders what her breasts look like with her shirt and bra off, how they feel. How different they are from other women’s he’s seen. He thinks of how Alicia would always giggle when he kissed hers and played with the stud she’d gotten on her left nipple. He flashes back to the feeling of it on his tongue and Alicia’s grip on his shoulders, and he can smell her perfume, how intoxicating it was to feel it. It mixed with Lindsey’s in his head. He wonders if Lindsey has any jewellery other than on her ring finger, what she must taste like when she comes. He knows what she sounds like by now.  
And like a kickdrum at the back of his head he thinks this while he’s also listening to Gerard’s moans, picturing Gerard’s naked thighs and chest and dick and taste. How his teeth would feel on the side of Mikey’s neck, with Lindsey’s breast under Mikey’s hand. If he’d want Mikey to ride him like Lindsey might be right then, just two doors away.  
  
  
Mikey doesn’t touch himself. He clenches the edge of his mattress so hard both his hands hurt. Sometimes when he pulls his arm back to wipe his hair out of his face, or to cup his palm over his mouth and try to breathe, his knuckles knock against the wall hard enough to thud. He imagines the vibrations shivering through the plaster into the ceiling, over to where Gerard and Lindsey are moving together in the dark.

Mikey _wants._ Very badly.

 

  
But every so often he also wants death, and almost all the time he wants something to dull the pain. He’s ill. He can’t let himself have those things, because it would ruin all of this difficult work he’s had to do of getting better. He’s trying to recover.  
He can be strong if he needs to be. It's gotten easier, lately, to resist the temptation to destroy himself.

If having Lindsey and Gerard here, so deliriously in love and exploring a healthy sex life within absurd distance of Mikey, is another temptation to add to the pile then he can deal with it.

  
He isn’t telepathic but sometimes he would pretend his brother could hear his thoughts, just simple ones like _what if_ or _yes_ or _can I, we—_  
Sometimes, it seems like Gerard answers him. A hug. A look he sends Mikey over his shoulder that lasts maybe a couple seconds longer than it feels like it should, with his hand on the small of Lindsey's back. The bedroom door left open.

  
But, no. It’s not real, only Mikey's own thoughts echoing back, and he needs to accept that.  
The only goddamn way out is through.

 

 

-


End file.
